Just my take, but I’m a first time taker, passed in December, and I found the test challenging and tricky in many subjects.
I feel pretty confident. Either I passed or I was Dunning-Krugered. Overall, the exam seemed fair & even forgiving - if you knew the big picture, you probably did OK.
I also guessed on the question where we weren’t required to know the formula. Oh well.
I had a few audibles when I used the wrong ‘…’ for a variable just because I was skimming too fast.
I was one of those people. I drank 4 cups of coffee in the morning to keep me up as i got no sleep the night before.
It’s kind of obnoxious to hear people say “MPS has to be 70%”. Just because you thought it was easy, doesn’t mean that the MPS will be higher, it just means that you were prepared and probably did well.
Its funny guess what people the only hard parts are the ones you don’t know…I assume we all know the basics and individual parts better here and there than others…1st time l2 taker…thought AM easier than PM, thought I know FI well and whiffed bad on the one vignette, thought equity and cf were easy, didnt study Alt much so the simple parts got me…Fra is my worst by far…I just can’t seem to comprehend it in depth ever like necessary…I could tell the test fra was much easier than the 2013 mock fra but it was still a disaster for me personally…going in I knew was not ready for fra but glad I took it anyway…ethics was alright, derivatives were another section hadnt much focused on…overall I thought it was fair but to be honest didnt cover a bunch of the topics I thought would be highly tested or important, but that’s the risk…not confident at all bc of fra and derivatives guessing but not worried or not stressing about it…good luck to all
Preface - I did all of the schweser mock exams, a supplementry prep-exam, the CFA sample exam, and the CFA mock. My scores ranged from 65-78. On each exam, except the sample, I found there were multiple questions where I had to dig to get the answer. By that, I mean that I’d have to go through multiple steps on calculations to get the end result.
I feel as if I spent the AM and PM sessions waiting for the hard questions to come. By hard, I’m referring to questions where you had to do a lot of work with multiple steps to get to the answer. Other than the issue mentioned in the derivatives section and one question in FI, I found everything fairly straight forward. There wasn’t any digging needed to pull out the information needed to chug through calculations; I found all the information straight forward with the data needed to calculate anything clearly presented. It was very different from the practice and mock exams. I’m sure that along the way, I probably made a stupid assumption here or there, but, over all, the exam seemed simple. Ethics, of course, had some tough pieces requiring thought; however, I expected that much.
Without revealing anything, I can say that I found the FRA sections much simplier than were tested in the mock, EOC, and Schweser exams. The PM questions did require some very specific knowledge; I know I did poorly there, but it was my own fault for rushing through that part of the review.
It’s possible that my heightened caffiene levels and nervousness made me miss some of the subtteties that made it tough; if that’s the case, I guess I’ll be writing again next year.
Deary me, I feel like I’ve failed reading this forum!
On the whole, I did find it fairly straightforward, but, there were a few item sets that really bothered me - Derivs and Fixed Income as a whole (my weakest subjects anyway) I felt were a bit unusual, and some of the Equity material required what I thought was probably too much work to get to the answer (though, I could’ve missed something, or overcomplicated the vignette in my head). I would be really disappointed if I failed on an exam with, what seems to be under the consensus, less distinguishingly difficult questions. Given the CFAI uses a modified Angoff method to set the MPS, though, it’s possible it will be significantly higher (and no reason why it couldn’t be above 70, right)? Sigh. I do think the exam seemed “fair” in the sense that it tested a wide variety of material though.
Fingers crossed everyone here is an overachiever!!
First timer on L2 after passing L1 in December here. Read CFAI books only, and did 3 Schweser mocks + CFAI mock.
I feel the AM session was much easier and straightforward. Maybe the CFAI is really good at putting the “wrong” answers in the choices and I fell for a lot of traps. Other than Ethics, I think the overall exam was fair in terms of the contents being tested. I felt quite relieved when I found FRA pretty doable. There were a few questions in Equity and Derivatives where I felt I was 80% sure of the formulas/knew how to do them, yet I just somehow couldn’t get to one of the answers listed after several tries.
Since I made a lot more guesses in the PM session and kind of rushed through it toward the end, I feel like my score is really borderline. For a few hours, I feel like I passed, and for the next few hours, I feel like I failed. This wait for our results is killing me. As much as I hope that my score will balance out between AM and PM and give me a pass, I won’t be surprised if I get band 8-10.
For derivs am I’m almost positive there was one answer that wasn’t listed in the am. Equity was all correct however
Yeah, I figured it was just me messing up a part in those problems. I never really doubted the right answers weren’t listed.
anyone notice stretches where the answers were all B or all C
no, but somebody told me that they mix up the answers and morning/afternoon sessions so somebody in UK can’t call somebody in NY and say the answer key is ABABC, etc. Of course, I wasn’t sure how they would know. However, I’m positive they mix up the morning and afternoon sessions between test centers/countries.
wrong on both accounts , exams are identical everywhere , ie see the Chinese forums, and yes there was a string of cs in the am accounting section for sure. Two years ago they had 6 straight as in ethics ha. Talk about a mind f>##
Out of less than 100 L2 writers at my test centre, 3 forgot a calculator or tried to bring in an unapproved calculator. Shockingly none of them decided to phone a friend or go for a walk on lunch and buy one either, yet all 3 came back for the afternoon session.
My take on the exam:
Morning session was VERY fair. I had time to go back and re-do most calculations to purposely get the wrong answers. However, there were a couple questions where I was totally confident with my answers but could not get to one of the choices. My only reassurance was that this happened with some EOC questions in the text as well due to rounding.
Afternoon session was tricker for sure and I feel was a weaker test of whether a candidate had a firm grasp on the material. I agree with someone earlier who said that for part of the afternoon exam, someone who didn’t study at all had the same chance as someone who studied like crazy. A guess is a guess and sometimes an educated guess works against us when the most likely wrong answer is a choice. Coming from someone who did not take any “gambles” by leaving anything out in my studies and read the CFA text books thoroughly, there were actually a few questions that I would call “unfair”.
I really like that from level 1 the elan mocks and questons would often repeat strings of awnsers. Then when I have wrote the actual tests i was so used to weird patterns that I didn’t consider it.
They obviously mix them up or you wouldnt have to match awnser sheets and books and they wouldn’t be numbered, I would put $1000 what were the numbers on the top of your two exams? I bet there were many different ones?
I had the same issue on a few answers where I was close but just a little off. I’m only worried in that you would think that the CFAI would focus on getting the exact answer when it’s a simple formula.
we’ll, if that’s the case, tthe CFAI Institute is lazy test preparers. what’s to stop somebody from getting an answer key from somebody taking this in china/japan/australia, plugging the code into their calculators and then calling somebody in America who then puts the code in their calculators. The proctors don’t clear your calculators so you could easily put a code in your calculator’s cash flow function 123123 = abcabc.
I thought they use “close/closest/mostcorrect” for a reason. I rarely got their numbers for derivatives but would get 11/12 on derivatives on the practice mocks.
Thank you bro for your help.
I am going to eat at Lavo Friday night. However, since I will be rushing through my meal to go to a party later that night, would it be appropriate for me to rate the restaurant on Yelp or would it be better to wait until a later time where I am not as rushed?